An arming scene of sorts:
Cutting strips of New York Times at lunch. (Thanks to Adam for the donation!)
ANIMATION!
This week I’ve been trying to teach myself Flash. Here’s a test snippet of something I’m working on…
LEROYING (RAPIDOGRAPHS ARE EVIL)
Many readers might not be aware, but my wife Meghan is getting her master’s degree in architecture (M.S., not M.Arch, for those who care…). So there’s not just one Kleon in our household who can draw!
Tonight I missed the bus and didn’t make it down to Vizthink, so I hung out with Meg down in the studio. She was using this crazy apparatus to do lettering:
It’s called a pantograph, or “Leroy” (named after the dude who invented it, I’d guess). It’s kind of like a compass: you basically trace a lettering template with a metal point, and the rapidograph pen follows along. I gave it a try…
…and I decided there was no way in hell I’d have the patience to do technical drawing! No thanks!
Dig my woman’s skills, though:
At one point she called me over and said, “Here, this will appeal to your sense of humor.”
She knows me well.
VISUAL THINKING
this one is dedicated to lynda barry and her new book which looks amazing
pretty much a paraphrase of this page:
KIND WORDS FOR NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT POEMS
Lots of love for the blackout poems floating around the ‘sphere lately.
Wim Lockefeer (Belgium) wrote a nice little post about them on his excellent blog, The Ephemerist:
Austin Kleon is a cartoonist and poet from Austin, Texas who has a quite original and intriguing way of working. He takes a page from an existing book and blacks out words until he finds a new and hidden meaning in the text, using the block of text as a visual and poetic element, on a par with the actual words….Some of the results are hilarious, some are profound and even unsettling, but they are never bland or boring.
And Greg Wind (Newton, MA) wrote a really flattering post over at Radio Exile:
Part “writing with constrictions,” part happy accident, part found art, part design challenge, the images/poems strike you as a tangible form of indie rock. The materials are easy to find, but making it more than a novelty or parlor trick takes a particularly trained eye and a lot of deep-seated ideas that will find expression through any outlet you make available. The expression subsumes the form….Austin keeps it coming from an honest place, and you can imagine that for every piece that makes it to the site, there are a dozen that couldn’t provide the right word or went in a bad direction. The collection in no order other than chronological gives a well rounded and consistent view into a guy most of us would want to buy a beer (or wouldn’t mind getting this round as long as he’s buying the next).
Big thanks to all you other readers, bloggers, and Stumbleupon folks who support my work! I really appreciate it.
UPDATE (5/8): Jason Kottke linked to the poems, and since then a terrific number of folks have pointed this way. Thanks, everyone!
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